One of the things we've wanted to do more is show off how people use our stuff. And I've been wanting to do more with screencasting since forever, so it seemed logical to combine the two. We invited Joyce and Adam (the co-founders and friends of mine) over to show off Renkoo while we recorded the conversation with Camtasia.

Hey Jeremy, I think it's awesome what you guys have been doing at Yahoo! Everything is starting to fall together nicely, and the developer network with the Yahoo UI Library is amazing. We're utilizing a lot from the Yahoo! UI, along with some use of the Yahoo! Search API. In the past, business and enterprise applications have been boring and lifeless. There's a need for a beautiful and fluid UI, along with the integration of social technology when it comes to business software. The YDN resources are helping us do that. I'd love to give yourself and Yahoo! one of the first looks when the app is finished in the next couple of weeks.

How do you deal with commercial clauses in the Yahoo API? We would love to use the local search API ourselves but it's limited to 5000 queries a day (and possibly non-commercial use? How does Renkoo get a pass on that? Or what happens when an app gets big and starts exceeding that limit...5k a day is not that much and any app of substantial size will hit it soon enough...what happens to the users of the app that are relying on the yahoo functionality then?

We have a limited number of commercial API agreements in place right now. Since the rate limits are IP based, it's not a problem for some businesses (those with multiple servers) and those using JSON output in the browser.

Much to my surprise, the screencast worked pretty well and illustrating the product and the chatty informal discussion made the 6 minutes pass quickly. As for Renkoo, I'm sure it will find its devotees. For me, I need to find some friends first.

I was just thinking, it'd be cool is Camtasia had a little 'switcher' command where you could switch from recording the screen to whatever your computer video camera is looking at - in this case, the interviewess. That would get us one step closer to a fully-produced videocast.

on January 28, 2007 05:34 AM

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